ACCP members and ACCP Report readers will be familiar with the term impact factor (IF). This metric is published each year by Clarivate Analytics, a company providing multiple products related to scientific research insights. The IF reflects a journal’s performance and status through a record of how often its articles are cited in other biomedical journals. The release of IF data is eagerly awaited each year by publishers and editorial teams. The data released June 26 ranked 12,300 journals in terms of citations during 2017 of articles published during 2015–2016.

The IF for Pharmacotherapy increased from 2.932 last year to 3.196 this year, pushing Pharmacotherapy over an important IF threshold of 3.0, an all-time high. This increase can be placed in a different perspective by understanding how Pharmacotherapy is ranked within its designated journal category, Pharmacy and Pharmacology. Last year, Pharmacotherapy broke into the top 100 journals in this category by having the 95th highest IF out of 256 journals. This year, the position has improved further, with the journal ranked 80th out of 261 journals.

Although use of IF data as the sole measure of journal quality has been widely criticized, IF remains a vital measure in biomedical publishing of a journal’s impact on its field. Perhaps an analogy can be made to a country’s gross domestic product, the total value of goods produced and services provided by a country in 1 year. Clearly, neither of these two metrics tells a complete story, but each can be regarded as a primary performance metric. In the future, this column will supplement the journal’s citation metrics with data on downloads and international readership together with comparisons to other journals.

The publication of Pharmacotherapy is made possible through the combined effort of many individuals, including publication staff, editors, editorial board members, and reviewers. Most important are the authors who choose to submit their best work to the journal. Exposure to an international readership of articles published in Pharmacotherapy is increasing. Hopefully, the quality of Pharmacotherapy, as reflected by an IF that has steadily increased over the past several years, will continue to stimulate important submissions to improve drug therapy.